Stevan Harnad, Professor of Cognitive Science Southampton University, UK ---------------------------
Dear All, I ask gpgNet forum readers to note how frequently in Jan Velterop's mostly useful and informative posting [See, http://groups.undp.org/read/messages?id=97847 ], "Open Access" keeps being used interchangeably with "Open Access Publishing" (the "golden" road to Open Access [OA]). OA and OA Publishing are not the same, so no wonder that the arguments for and against the one are not the same as the arguments for and against the other. There are indeed some unanswered questions about the sustainability of the OA Publishing model -- which replaces the non-OA user-institution-end cost-recovery model with either an author-institution-end cost-recovery model or a subsidy model -- and these questions are in the process of being tested by the new OA Journals that exist so far (about 1200, or 5%). The answers are hence not yet known. http://www.doaj.org/ But meanwhile the "green" road to OA -- which is to provide OA to the articles published in the remaining 22,800 non-OA journals (95%) through author/institution self-archiving -- is already providing three times as much OA today (about 15%) as the golden road is providing (about 5%). And, more important still, OA self-archiving has the immediate power to scale up to 100% OA virtually overnight, without the need to wait for the conversion of the remaining 22,800 non-OA journals to OA. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#31.Waiting 100% OA solves (completely!) the research access/impact problem; it does not solve the journal pricing/affordability problem (but it does make it a good deal less urgent and important!). Until we clearly distinguish OA from OA publishing, and until we clearly distinguish the research access/impact problem from the journal pricing/affordability problem, there will be unrelenting confusion about the nature, purpose and benefits of OA. And until we realize that the green road of OA self-archiving is the most direct, broadest, fastest, and surest road to immediate OA, we will have neither 100% OA nor any prospect at all of 100% OA Publishing (because the green road of OA self-archiving is *also* the fastest and surest road to an eventual conversion to gold [OA Publishing] too, if there is indeed ever to be one!). Harnad, S., Brody, T., Vallieres, F., Carr, L., Hitchcock, S., Gingras, Y, Oppenheim, C., Stamerjohanns, H., & Hilf, E. (2004) The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access. Serials Review 30. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/impact.html Shorter version: The green and the gold roads to Open Access. Nature Web Focus. http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html Now try re-reading Jan Velterop's posting to see which of the arguments and uncertainties about "OA" are in fact just arguments and uncertainties about OA Publishing (gold), which of the benefits of OA Publishing are in fact the benefits of OA itself -- and how OA self-archiving (green) fits into the otherwise far from complete picture. The answer is not, I think, just to remind us that BioMed Central is now offering to help with self-archiving too! "BioMed Central to offer OAI repository service" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3969.html All help is of course welcome, but what is needed today is also a clear conceptual and strategic picture of OA, and a clear sense of how the complementary gold and green strategies actually fit into it, and what their respective functions and probabilities actualy are. This clarity will not come from continuing to treat "OA" as if it were identical with OA Publishing (gold), and as if the goal of OA were to solve the journal pricing/affordability problem rather than the research access/impact problem. OA Self-Archiving (green) must be fully and clearly and *explicitly* integrated into the OA strategic picture. This is not an *economic* matter but a *policy* matter -- for the providers and funders of the research that provides the content of the journal articles that this is all about! http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php Stevan Harnad Moderator, American Scientist Open Access Forum Professor of Cognitive Science Department of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton, UK URL: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ --- 20 September- 4 October 2004: gpgNet Forum on "Open Access to Scholarly Publications: A Model for Enhanced Knowledge Management?" Co-hosted with the Open Society Institute (OSI). Read background paper to the discussion at http://www.gpgnet.net/topic08.php View messages posted to this forum at http://groups.undp.org/read/?forum=gpgnet-oa To post your comments on the issue, send them to: gpgnet...@groups.undp.org